agriculture

09/06/2017

Against the advice of top Republicans and business leaders, and dismissing previous words he had uttered, America’s brave president took out his wrath on young adults who are functioning and contributing members of the nation’s society. With a six month delay to allow Congress to possibly come up with a program to allow them to stay, Trump expelled these children from America and forced them to return to homelands most of them do not remember. In fact, many of them only know English and do not speak the language of the country where they may be headed.

Not only was this a brutally mean assault on innocent young people who have integrated into America’s society, it is also an attack on our economy which will lower our long term GDP significantly. These are not criminals or the “bad hombres” that Trump talked about in the past. They are workers and students who are doing their best to “Make America Great.” They are not on welfare or takers, and not drug addicts or alcoholics, which could describe many members of Trump’s white base in the nation’s heartland. Instead of considering what the Dreamers are contributing to society, Trump was willing to banish them from America because of promises he had made to his base. And this was another Obama programs that he could destroy and cross off his list.

The DACA initiative instituted by Obama shielded about 800,000 young people who came to America as children from deportation to their native country. The immigration was done illegally by their parents, but Trump is punishing innocents for the sins of their parents to assuage his base. Trump said after his election that he was going to expel immigrants who were criminals and addicts and that those who were good and clean would be safe. But he went back on his word to one group to placate another.

What he is literally doing is taking Americans who are productive workers or students and sending them to an alien land where they have no friends and no roots. Some of them served or serve in the American military, protecting people like Trump who was able to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War. He had promised the Dreamers that he would treat them with great heart and last week had stated that “We love the Dreamers.” So this is what Trump does to people he loves? The Dreamers now are fearful of losing their livelihoods and their homes, and everything they have accumulated over the years. Some of them have had children here who are very young American citizens who they will have to take with them or leave them behind.

Many of the Dreamers are workers who are paying taxes and important cogs in industries across the United States. That is why leading businessmen implored Trump not to end the DACA program. More than 400 of them sent a message to Trump and members of Congress asking them to save the Dreamers, saying that they were critical for the economy. Much of their economic output and consumption will be lost if they are deported. Some of them work in the tech industry but also in different jobs across the nation. With unemployment so low, businesses will have difficulty replacing them. 65 percent of Dreamers have bought their own cars and 16 percent their own homes. One economist has predicted that five years after DACA is repealed, the nation’s GDP will be less $105 billion annually that would have been made with the Dreamers here.

Immigrants are not taking jobs away from Americans. They perform jobs (meat packing industry) that Americans don’t want or haven’t been trained for. Trump doesn’t seem to understand the effects this will have on the American economy or just doesn’t care. He doesn’t understand the pain and stress he is causing for innocent young Americans who have done nothing wrong. Trump’s smallminded, cruel move was bad for the Dreamers and bad for America. Hopefully, Congress will come up with legislation that will save the Dreamers, though past efforts have not been successful. With Jeff Sessions applauding what Trump has done along with Republican members of the Freedom Caucus, legislative protection of the Dreamers is far from a done deal. This is in spite of the fact that about 80 percent of Americans favor having the Dreamers remain here.

01/31/2017

While the press and most Americans were focused on the Trump ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, a move of potentially greater significance to the nation appears to have slipped under the radar for the most part. The press has focused on Trump’s rushed order that took many government employees by surprise, and its effect on families, and American businesses. Putting the ban in place may have been suggested by Steven Bannon, a major Trump advisor. The media prominently covered the demonstrations against the ban, the way judges had put a halt to some of the orders, and the way various lawyers had come to the aid of the detainees. There is no question that this move by Trump contradicted American values, such as a welcoming embrace for refugees and those buffeted by war and persecution, and that his order may be unconstitutional in some ways.

However, while the immigration bru-ha-ha was taking place, Trump changed the make-up of the National Security Council, potentially putting the nation at greater risk and providing his campaign manager and chief advisor Steven Bannon with greater power. Bannon, who had been a right-wing agitator and the CEO of Breitbart News before hooking up with the Trump campaign, did have some minimal military experience, having served in the Navy when he was much younger. But he was not a military or intelligence expert.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence were removed from the Council, and told to participate only when the Council considers issues in their area of responsibility. This is really bizarre when you think about it, as every issue before the National Security Council should involve input from the DNI and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Why should President Trump have removed them from the Council and put Steven Bannon with no expertise involving national security in their place.

It sounds as if the idea may have come directly from Bannon, who convinced Trump that he could play a useful role on the Council. The order elevates Bannon over the DNI, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and above top military and intelligence advisors, and puts him on a level with the Secretaries of Defense and State. Bannon is basically a political appointee who now may be considered President Trump’s top dog on military and intelligence issues, with a direct line to the president’s ear.

The president’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, declared that the move at the NSC was done to make an antiquated and bloated bureaucracy more efficient, a talking point that makes no sense. Past high-level officials from both parties were surprised and disturbed by the action, which was seen as injecting politics into national security issues, which is a strong no-no. Political repercussions should never be a consideration when dealing with national security.

And why should someone like Bannon, with no significant military or intelligence expertise be on the National Security Council. It appears as if Trump has raised him to be his second in command, above his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his White Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus who was appointed at the same time as Bannon. Bannon also appears to have supplanted General Michael Flynn as Trump’s main source of national security information, with Flynn having made some missteps in his interactions with Trump.

But the Bannon role is particularly concerning because of his access to Trump and the way the president follows his advice. As his role has expanded, he has accumulated more power. One wonders if Bannon has become the Trumpian equivalent of Rasputin who was the influential advisor to Czar Nicholas, the last Russian czar who was deposed and killed by the Communists at the time of the Revolution. Given his history of involvement with white supremacists and the alt-right, Bannon presents a danger to American democracy with his position in the Trump White House hierarchy. The question is whether the Republican establishment can get Bannon out before he does too much damage? Otherwise, America is even in more trouble.

05/03/2016

With Trump and Sanders arguing against trade pacts, is free trade good or bad for the U.S. The United States in 2015 reached a deal with eleven other Pacific nations for a trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to lower trade barriers and establish rules and regulations for the involved countries. Approximately 40 percent of the global economy would be included in the partnership. However, first it has to be approved by Congress as well as legislative bodies in the other participating countries. While this would be helpful in counteracting the commercial power of China, there is a lot of opposition in the United States, with unions fearing job losses and environmental groups concerned as well. There is also Republican resistance over providing President Obama with any sort of victory by voting for the TPP. Multinational corporations for the most part are in favor of the pact.

While free trade between nations would appear to provide significant benefits as shown by the E.U, there are problems that have to be worked out to truly reap these benefits. Though protectionist policies may temporarily save jobs in high cost countries, eventually products that are manufactured less expensively will command the marketplace. And though cheap labor may attract global corporations to certain countries, sophisticated workers may be required for particular jobs, increasingly so as work is performed by robots and computers. There is also the cost of transporting goods made in another country thousands of miles distant to the nation where the product will be used. Disregarding environmental protections to lower production costs will also come back to haunt nations that allow this. Health has been impaired in countries such as China that has to clean up the pollution in its air, soil, and water. Nations look after their own interests and global free trade will only become a reality when enough nations believe it suits them.

The bottom line is that there are winners and losers in free trade and trade agreements like NAFTA and the TPP. And years or even decades may be necessary to determine whether the benefits exceeded the damages for the nations that sign the agreements. Even economists have had difficulty deciding whether free trade helps developed countries or hurts them, though in the past, most thought that in the long run it was beneficial. As trade generally augments global economic output, economists believed that workers whose jobs vanished because of imports would rapidly find work in other fields that were expanding. Now, they are not so sure. Currently, there is much debate among economists over whether trade deals have been worthwhile for America. Previously, when trade was mainly between rich countries, labor costs were not that different from nation to nation. But trade agreements with nations whose labor is exceeding cheap compared to developed nations have been a different ballgame.

Many economists believe that the TPP will result in job losses and increased income inequality in all the participating nations, but even more so in the United States. There is little question that China, Japan, and Korea used America’s desire for free trade for their own advantage over the years, protecting their own nascent industries and using currency manipulation to sell goods to the U.S. and other developed nations. And trade imbalances between China and the United States have continued, with exports from the U.S. much smaller than imports from China, giving the latter nation a persistent surplus. If exports to China had increased proportionately, with Chinese consumers buying imported products instead of saving their money, many more jobs might have been generated in America. That would have diminished unemployment and underemployment, along with some of the global trade imbalance. Trade agreements may have saved some American corporations’ intellectual property and copyrights, and respect for some patents by foreign governments, but they did nothing for American workers.

Though the goods that came to America from China and other countries may have been cheaper than those made by American industries, and American consumers benefitted from this, many factories and businesses were ruined by the influx of these inexpensive products, and millions of workers lost decent-paying jobs. And even though some American products were sold to nations abroad through these trade agreements, there was pressure to keep prices down to compete with cheap labor in other countries. This resulted in diminished wages for those American workers who kept their jobs. Multi-national corporations and their executives did well with these trade agreements, but the average worker, particularly those who were uneducated, were badly hurt. Government programs for further education and retraining for different fields have not been adequate to salve the wounds of those who lost jobs and the reasonable wages they were earning. And it should be remembered that it was American companies like Walmart that were importing the products from China and other low-wage countries to heighten their own profits, disregarding the effect it would have on American workers.

Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left have used rhetoric that resonates with the disaffected middle and lower classes, white men with high school educations or less, who are now unemployed or unable to find well-paying jobs that would propel them back into the middle class. But the candidates’ promises to bring factory jobs back from Mexico or China ring false. The jobs will not return even if the factories do. Trump’s idea of 45 percent tariffs on Chinese products and breaking NAFTA will accomplish nothing for American workers but will raise prices for consumers. With factories increasingly automated globally, those that once employed five hundred workers, may now be able to function well with five or ten workers to see that the robots and computers are running smoothly.

It is no different than mega-farming where mechanization has cut the number of men and women needed to pick vegetables. Fifty years ago, 45,000 workers were required to pick and sort 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup in California. In 2000, only 5000 workers were necessary to harvest 12 million tons with the machines that had been developed. As farm output has skyrocketed, employment in that sector has fallen in the U.S. during the 20th century from 41 percent to 2 percent. Manufacturing employment can be expected to follow a similar course, no matter what the politicians say. At present it encompasses 8.5 percent of non-farm jobs, down from 24 percent in 1950, and may have further to go.

Though changes in trade policy may not make a significant difference in manufacturing employment, developed nations including the United States should try and maintain as much manufacturing domestically as possible, even with the smaller number of workers that will be utilized. However, de-industrialization in advanced countries means transitioning to a service economy, with well-paying jobs that require at least some level of education or training. Funds for retraining will have to come from government, industry, or both. In the United States, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have paid enough attention to the travails of unemployed disaffected workers, stoking populist anger that has yet to be assuaged. Perhaps now, their angry voices will begin to be heard.

02/02/2016

Guess there weren’t enough angry white men in Iowa to give The Donald a victory in the caucuses. That means The Donald is a loser, a word he abhors. However, the demographic supporting him is also made up of losers, angry white men who life has passed by and are dying off earlier than would be expected.

Several months ago, an analysis by two social scientists from Princeton showed that middle-aged uneducated white men had an increased mortality rate. Those with a high school education or less schooling were dying off faster than any other demographic group. Given the advances in medical diagnostic and therapeutic developments, and prophylaxis for chronic illnesses, mortality rates across the board had been going down aside from this one sector.

One of the interesting facts about this group is that they are basically killing themselves, either quickly or slowly. The leading causes of death in this stratum are suicide, alcoholism and drug usage, and there’s a higher incidence of chronic pain and various illnesses. This is not a happy bunch. They are often unmarried, divorced and single, do not have many relationships, and do not socialize well. There is also a much higher level of unemployment or underemployment in these men.

Under a lot of stress, they do not have much to look forward to as they grow older. And they are angry. Life has not turned out the way they had envisioned it when they were younger. Of course, much of their situation is their own doing as they abandoned education for a variety of reasons, not having the foresight to realize it was a necessity in the new economy. And perhaps they started using drugs or alcohol when they were much younger, making education or decent jobs hard to come by or stick with.

But most of them do not want to blame themselves for the way their lives have unraveled. It is much easier to fault the immigrants who have “flooded the country,” taking the good jobs for themselves. The fact that immigrant jobs are commonly picking fruits and vegetables, working in slaughterhouses, doing landscaping and washing cars, cleaning rooms and toilets in hotels, and working in fast food restaurants, is disregarded by these white men who would never have considered work of that sort in the first place.

And they loathe the government. After all, the government has been supporting all these welfare queens who sit back on their asses and receive money without working. They have six or seven children by different fathers and get more money. However, that story ended during the Clinton administration twenty years ago and was not really true in the first place, though perhaps still believed by these angry white middle-agers.

There’s also China to blame. China has taken all those good manufacturing jobs away from America and Trump says he’s going to bring those jobs back. Good luck to him! There are plenty of jobs anyway going begging in the high-tech industries, but you need education and training for those which uneducated middle-aged white guys don’t have.

Well, now these angry uneducated white men have a savior- The Donald. He is angry too and he is going to do something to make America great again. Just exactly what that is, is not clear, but he is going to do it. And these uneducated angry white men believe him because they want someone who will give them hope. Immigrants are going to be deported and a wall built at the border. Well, more immigrants are already leaving America than coming in. And this is before The Donald gets to do anything. Are these middle-aged white men going to take the jobs that will open up? Not likely when they’re drinking, or doing meth or heroin.

What is Trump really going to do for these poor bastards whom life has passed by if he gets elected president? Not much, you can bet. In fact, he would call them losers if he didn’t want their votes in the election. But they love him anyway because he’s angry and shouts and says things that are politically incorrect, and doesn’t give a f--- what anyone else thinks.

And how much of their adoration of The Donald is fantasy for these poor, middle-aged, uneducated white men? Here’s a guy who they think has it all. He’s rich, has a private jet, gets to screw plenty of beautiful women who fawn all over him, can say whatever he wants to anyone, and gets to run for president and maybe win.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once they could tell off the boss and walk off the job with a beautiful woman on their arm? Wouldn’t it be nice if they could be like The Donald, the loser in Iowa?

01/06/2016

Education may not have been a prerequisite for the jobs most factory workers previously performed, but now that many manufacturing positions have migrated from the developed world, workers may not have the knowledge or skill set to perform jobs in a high tech environment. New factory jobs may require computer proficiency to run the machines that fabricate numerous products. Retraining programs for unemployed workers hopefully will prepare them for the 21st century positions that are available. And many are available. But government must recognize that finding satisfactory work, particularly for older people, is not as simple as it once was, and support for displaced workers must be forthcoming for the duration of the process.

Because of deficiencies in K-12 and higher education, American workers are lacking in the literacy and numeracy skills seen in workers in other developed nations. Obviously, this makes it more difficult for them to utilize advanced technology well. Even college graduates and holders of master’s degrees in the U.S. fare poorly compared to similar individuals of other industrialized countries. The American education system needs to be revamped, from K-12 to graduate programs, and new emphasis placed on basic skills. Vocational schools, apprenticeships, and community colleges must also train their students properly for the job market. Continuing education while a person is working should also be encouraged. Worker skill levels must improve significantly.

The use of information technology has exploded in the last two to three decades, with new developments invading personal life as well as every sector of the business world. In the past there was a belief in creative destruction and that jobs in new industries would more than replace the jobs that were lost when previous industries vanished. This may no longer happen as major industries arise that are not labor-intensive. And mature industries that survive and thrive will do so with fewer workers.

As computerization and the use of robots increases, fewer agricultural and manufacturing positions will be available, as everything will be mechanized and productivity soars. For instance, whereas one hundred people may have been necessary to fabricate ten thousand widgets daily, computers and robots will perform the necessary tasks, with five workers doing the programing, quality checking, and making certain there are no glitches in production. Fully automated factories that make various consumer products are already in operation globally with very few workers required to keep the assembly lines going.

Picking and planting fruits and vegetables of every sort, harvesting grains, milking cows, collecting eggs, and caring for domestic animals will be handled by robots, with a few agricultural technicians overseeing the processes. In the not-too-distant past, seventy-five to eighty percent of a society’s manpower or more was devoted to agriculture and food production. Less than one percent will be necessary in the future.

Virtually any manual task can be performed by specially designed robots, machines of different sorts with computerized brains that direct their movements and actions. As noted by Martin Ford in Rise of the Robots, “the robot can work continuously; it will never get tired or suffer a back injury- and will certainly never file a worker’s compensation claim.” (One of the early backers of robotics and intelligent machines was Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who foresaw the increasing use of these in Amazon’s warehouses.)

In the near future, taxis and cars will be automated and operate without drivers as will delivery and long distance trucks. More advanced computers and robots will replace secretaries, hotel and department store workers. Fewer professionals in all areas will be required in a few decades including bookkeepers, accountants, legal assistants and lawyers. Middle levels managers will also see their jobs disappear. Salespersons in retail establishments will be replaced in a large part by sales robots. Those salespeople (the traveling salesman of yore) who have their own territories and sell large wholesale lots to various kinds of stores and those who decide on what to purchase from them will be supplanted by computerized systems which do the selling and the buying. Interestingly, artificial intelligence is being used currently by the I.R.S. to review tax returns and find tax shelters and other forms of tax evasion.

Robots will take over many of the tasks of home health aides, nurse’s aides, nurses, medical assistants, and physicians in the years ahead. Routine functions in particular will be automated, though nurses and physician’s assistants will be required to provide emotional support to sick patients. Fewer physicians will be needed as diagnostic and treatment algorhythms will aid doctors in making diagnoses and providing proper treatment. And robotic surgeons will perform many of the operations, perhaps with physicians acting as backups in the OR. As more older people remain in their homes as they age (cutting down on nursing home employees), drones and robotic assistants will handle many of the household chores and even do the shopping.

Just as autonomously operating vehicles on the ground will be a reality in a few years, airplanes eventually will use automation to do the flying. Even the military will require fewer officers and enlisted men as specialized robots protect a nation’s interests by doing the fighting and guarding its borders. As is done currently with drones eliminating enemies of the United States, men and women far from the battlefield will direct drones and robots to fight an adversary’s mechanized forces. And minimal human crews will be necessary to sail a navy’s ships, load the ordinance and fire the guns, rockets, and cruise missiles. Big bombers and aircraft carriers will be outmoded, as the nations with the best and largest fighting forces of drones and robots will win future wars.

Some computer mavens assert that artificial intelligence will never equal or surpass human ability to innovate or deal with unexpected situations, and because of this humans will always be needed for certain jobs. This may be true, but it is still likely that the majority of tasks that men and women perform can be automated and handled by machines of various sorts, reducing the number of available jobs and hours of work. Government, corporations, and people must adjust to the changes ahead, with work disconnected from income. If a well-designed system of support for citizens is not in place in time, social chaos can be expected.